“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

We claim faith in Jesus the Christ. We stand with voices raised heavenward singing, “Standing on the promises of God,” we glibly quote scripture and encourage our neighbors and friends to ‘only believe’. Yet, when we are confronted with trials and testing, when our own world appears to crumble beneath us, we cry in agony, race to the doctor, grab a pill or call a friend to listen to our woes.

We generally feel sorry for ourselves, while bemoaning the unfairness of our circumstance we fail to remember the words of the Psalm – “Be still [cease striving] and know [remember] that I AM God.”

While this may be natural, we were not chosen of God to be natural, we were chosen by God, ‘out of the world’, a new creation in Him – called to be a supernatural people. We all too quickly panic rather than praise and all too soon forget:

“In all [these] things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” [Romans 8:37]

Scripture tells us – “Endure hardship as discipline. God is testing you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?” [Hebrews 12:7]

Again, scripture tells us – “Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” [James 1:1-4]

We are powerless in and of ourselves. We read in Habakkuk, ‘it is The LORD God who is our strength. It is He who makes me walk on high places.’

We are admonished to never forget – ‘we are not to conform to this world [the natural] but be transformed by the renewing of our mind [supernatural] so that we might prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.’ [Romans 12:2]